Rick Santorum said he recently spoke with a Greek who he said helped him better understand how to save the economy.

The Greek said that in his language the word “economy” comes from the word “home.”

He was half right: “Home” in Greek is “oikos,” and “oikosnomia” roughly means “household management” — the economy.

“You strengthen the home, you strengthen the economy,” Santorum later said. “I know people said, ‘Oh, just talk about the economic issues.’ You don’t talk about the family, you don’t talk about strong marriages and mothers and fathers helping to raise children, you can’t have a strong economy. At least over the long term.”

The crowd Santorum spoke to that morning at the Pizza Ranch in Clarion, minus media folks, numbered at perhaps seven to nine people — about the size of Santorum’s own family.

The former Pennsylvania senator does have a more policy-oriented plan for the economy that involves halving the corporate tax rate and encouraging U.S. manufacturing.

But on a three-day tour through some very small towns to some very small crowds, Santorum kept the focus on the family. And rural values.

“We’re going to all the smaller counties to say a couple of things: Number one, we know you’re here,” Santorum said that afternoon in Grundy Center. “And unless we have someone who is oriented in that direction, then rural America is going to suffer and we’re going to see more concentration in cities.”

Rural America needs to be preserved, Santorum said, because “We need to still have a large segment of the population that’s grounded. And you don’t accomplish that unless you live out here with the land.”